


take me by the hand and stand by my side

by Aramley



Series: all i want is you [2]
Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So it goes like this: they get married, and then things get crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take me by the hand and stand by my side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meretricula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/gifts).



> Sequel to [if you were a wink, i'd be a nod](http://archiveofourown.org/works/214159) and takes place right after that fic at the 2014 US Open.

So it goes like this: they get married, and then things get crazy.

With hindsight, tweeting may not have been the best way to announce it to the world. 

"I can't fucking believe you," Andy shouts. "I thought you were joking!"

"Nobody ever believes me," Novak says, trying to sound wounded and failing comprehensively. It's difficult to sound anything but what he is, which is insanely, achingly happy. "Everyone is so cruel to me."

"You didn't invite me to your wedding," Andy points out, not unreasonably.

Novak's phone vibrates against his ear, which means he has another message. Probably in the same vein as the things that Andy is still shouting at him. He never knew there were so many people invested in watching him get married, but he's received texts or voicemail from what feels like half the ATP and three-quarters of the WTA while the other half and a quarter must be busy trying to get Rafa, if the slightly pained expression on his face as he thumbs at his phone is anything to go by.

When Novak looks at Rafa, the word _husband_ goes through his head and he feels sick, but in a good way. He reaches out and pokes Rafa in the arm and Rafa looks up at him, and they grin together, almost giggling, like they've just got away with something terrible and wonderful. Which they have.

"You're not even listening to me," Andy says.

"Not really, Andy, no," Novak says, and hangs up. Andy will forgive him. Andy has known that Novak's crazy since they were about twelve; Andy's known Novak's crazy for Rafa since they were about twenty-one; Andy's known Novak's crazily, sickeningly serious about this thing between him and Rafa since about five minutes after it started, which is about a year before Rafa worked it out himself and probably more like two before Novak worked up the courage to tell him.

Not that it matters, now. Rafa's got a ring on his finger that says Novak's not the only crazy one here. 

Rafa reaches out his right hand to pick up Novak's left. He picks it up by the ring finger, delicate and almost curious, holding that one aloft between his thumb and middle finger while he twists the gold band around with his index finger with an intimate gesture that makes the word _husband_ flash through Novak's mind again, chased by _wedding night_. Too bad they'll be spending it on a plane to New York. Although, hey: mile high.

"Sorry?" Rafa says, and, distracted, for a second Novak thinks he's apologising for something. Then he realises: Rafa is asking him if he regrets this.

They're a couple of hours and a set of vows past joking about this now, but why break the habit of a lifetime. He twists his hand in Rafa's to bind them together and says, "I think I can live with it."

-

Marko gives him the kind of up-and-down look that only a younger brother can give, and says, "So, are you knocked up or what?"

"This is why Djordje is my favourite," Novak tells him.

It's New York, it's the US Open, and the level of insanity he has unleashed by not-very-secretly marrying his as-it-turns-out-actually-pretty-secret boyfriend is just beginning to dawn on Novak. The press he can handle, the fans are largely supportive, but a suite full of his and Rafa's combined family makes him want to lock himself in the bathroom and never come out.

" _Nobody is talking to each other_ ," Novak tells Jelena, from inside the locked bathroom. 

"Do you even know what time it is here," Jelena asks from a continent away, sounding both annoyed and sleepy.

"This is an emergency," he says. His harassed reflection looks back at himself from every angle of the trendy mirror-and-chrome bathroom. "My parents and my in-laws are sitting in my living room and collectively judging me."

"You eloped in Canada," Jelena says, in a tone that suggests Novak really should have thought of this. "Maybe they need a minute to adjust?"

"I told them I was going to do it," Novak protests. "I asked his parents' permission! Toni was there!"

"They probably didn't think you were going to take him directly from the tennis court to the court-house," Jelena says. She yawns. "Nole, I love you, okay, but it's _so late._ "

"You are so unsupportive," he sighs. "This is why we broke up." 

The doorhandle rattles urgently, and after a second comes Rafa's low hiss, "Novak, I know you are in there, let me in."

"Oh, right," says Jelena. "I thought we broke up because you were sleeping with a man."

Novak smirks, and as he reaches over to twist the lock open he tells Jelena, "To be fair, he was sort of the love of my life."

Rafa slips in looking hunted, and relocks the door behind him. "Who you are talking to?"

"Jelena," Novak says. "We're talking about why we broke up."

"This is why you break up," Rafa mutters, plucking the phone out of Novak's grip and bringing it to his own ear. "Hello Jelena. Sorry for Novak, I think my family drive him crazy. We have to go now. Bye."

He hangs up and hands the phone back to Novak, dark-eyed. Novak is aware that he's gaping a little.

"Oh my god," he says. "You drive me crazy when you are jealous."

Rafa huffs, pretending not to care. "You cannot get out of this."

"I am serious," Novak says, "so hot," while he tucks fingers into the belt-loops of Rafa's jeans and tries to tug him closer, because so far he thinks whoever said that marriage kills the passion in a relationship was probably either a liar or married to the wrong person. Rafa sighs, feigning reluctance, and allows himself to be tugged.

"They gonna miss us," he warns, his breath stirring against Novak's cheek, and his arms warm around Novak despite his protests. The way he tips his head to one side is an invitation that Novak never misses.

Novak grins. He slips his fingers underneath Rafa's t-shirt to find warm skin. "We have five minutes."

Well. They don't.

"We all know what you're doing in there, you perverts," Marko shouts through the door, accompanied by a frantic knocking.

Novak drops his head and groans against Rafa's shoulder. What is his life that he's twenty-eight, _married_ and still getting cock-blocked by his little brother? 

"This is why Djordje is my favourite," Novak says, loudly.

-

He's hitting at practice with Janko – at least, Novak is running around while Janko deliberately slices, spins, and lobs every single ball out of Novak's reach as a punishment for not being invited to the wedding ("Nobody was there!" Novak protests, stretching out for another ball that slips delicately past the head of his racket, while Janko just grins behind his blue-tinted glasses like the asshole he is and Marian does absolutely nothing to stop him) – when he spots Maribel at the side of the court.

"Okay, fuck this, and you," Novak says, giving up. As he leaves the court, he shouts, "Next time I get married you can definitely be there, okay?"

"You're damn right," Janko yells back.

Maribel gives him a Look as he approaches and Novak suddenly realises that he has a little sister now, too. Okay, a little sister who's in her mid-twenties and has probably been more mature than her own older brother since she learned to speak, but still.

"Hi," he says, suddenly very conscious of being sweaty and stinking and married to her older brother. "If you are looking for Rafa, I think he is not practicing until later."

"No, I come looking for you," she says, which is not comforting. "You're hungry? You want to get lunch?"

She tosses her hair back and he thinks, Jesus, she looks like Rafa.

Over salads in the players' restaurant, he says, "So, I am sorry about the whole," and then shrugs awkwardly in a way that he hopes conveys something about shotgun weddings, absent families, all that stuff that he's not actually that sorry about but which people seem to expect him to be.

"Is okay," she says, with a shrug. "Maybe they make you feel guilty for a while, but secretly, you know, they are pleased. We are all pleased."

"Yeah?" Novak grins. "So, how long you think they will make me suffer?"

She shrugs, with a considering expression that's an eerie echo of Rafa. "I guess maybe five, ten years."

And okay, maybe having a sister will be _no different at all_.

"Fifteen, most," she says, smiling now. "Twenty? They gonna love you."

-

He comes easily through the first round, and, "So, Novak," the on-court interviewer says, with a half-second's suggestive pause before he continues, "I hear congratulations are in order?"

Novak laughs while around him the noise of the Ashe crowd ratchets up, some cheers and applause, a couple of isolated catcalls distinct from the rest. Distantly he thinks he hears a little booing, but he's been booed here before for lesser things and he could, frankly, give less of a fuck about it. 

"Thank you," he says, into the mike that's offered to him. He waves at the crowd generally to acknowledge the good feeling. "Thanks guys, thanks for your support."

"I guess my invitation must have got lost in the mail," the interviewer says, to another low tremor of laughter. 

"No, no, don't blame the mail," Novak says, playing to it. "You weren't invited at all."

The interviewer pretends to cut the interview short, and Novak laughs and wipes at the cooling sweat on his forehead and cheeks. He's aching, but happy; happy in the usual post-match way and in the way that seems to have set up home behind the safe cage of his ribs since he got – holy fuck – _married_ (he wonders if he'll ever be able to think of that word without that spasm of incredulous joy). "You and Rafa were drawn in the same half, so if all goes according to plan you guys might have to cut the honeymoon short," he continues. "How do you feel about playing each other in the semi-finals?" "Well, you know, I can't think that far ahead," Novak says. "Always in this sport you play one match at a time, hope to be here to play in the semi-final." The interviewer presses, "But how do you think you'd feel if it's your husband staring you down out there, just a couple weeks after your wedding?" For a second Novak falters on the edge of saying something true, like, _Well, to tell the truth I am trying to pretend it's never going to happen_ , but instead he goes for the diplomatic option: "Is the same for everyone in tennis, who have to play their brothers, sisters, friends, you know, team-mates."

"Yeah," the interviewer says, "but I guess your Davies Cup team-mate won't make you sleep on the couch if you win, right?"

-

The good thing about being drawn in the same half is that they largely share the same schedule, which doesn't really mean they see more of each other than usual, but at least they don't see less. Being married doesn't really change much about day-to-day living, because being a professional tennis player entails being so married to the sport that any relationship with another human is essentially bigamous, and so far the biggest difference is that Rafa stays the night, every night. Novak's not sorry to know he's walked his own last walk of shame. They still technically have two rooms ("I am sorry," Marian says, "of course, when we were scheduling your year I should have guessed you were going to lose your mind and booked the honeymoon suite!") but the second is now almost exclusively for their mountains of gear.

Still, it feels weird and domestic, edging unhurried around each other in the bathroom in the mornings, Rafa brushing his teeth with a brush that lives in the same holder as Novak's now while Novak fumbles his contacts in.

"That look so bad," Rafa says, his expression in the mirror disgusted at the way Novak is holding his eyelids back with two fingers and trying to settle his contact in with a third. Novak thinks that considering Rafa looks rabid with toothpaste foam, he should probably shut up.

"Hey, you lost the bet, we're married now," he says. The contact settles in and he blinks, eye watering. "I don't have to pretend to be perfect all of the time."

Rafa makes noises that probably mean something like, "Is that what you thought you were doing?" and spits.

-

When he runs into her in the player's lounge, Maria punches him in the shoulder, hard, but he knows she's secretly pleased for him because she does it to his left.

"Ana hit harder," he tells her, and ducks out of her reach before she can take it as a challenge.

"I can't believe someone _married you_ and I wasn't there to see it," Maria says. "Are you sure? Is there evidence?"

Novak pulls out his Blackberry and shows her his screensaver, which is a picture that Marian took of him and Rafa just after they'd signed the register, their first picture as a married couple. Marian is terrible with technology and the picture is a little blurred, but you can see the grins on their faces.

"Aww," says Maria, looking at it with a slightly softened expression. "You are kind of sickeningly adorable."

"It's a curse," Novak says. He takes a last look at the picture before he pockets the phone again, enjoys the frisson of heat in the region of his heart. When he looks up Maria is smiling at him.

"Enjoy this part," she says, patting his abused shoulder. Her own wedding ring glints.

He laughs. "What," he says, "it's all downhill from here?"

"No," Maria says, smiling. "But this part is so nice."

-

The first time he takes off his wedding ring before a match, Rafa asks Novak if he minds. 

"No, of course no," Novak says, but a little part of him – the ridiculous part (okay, the _more_ ridiculous part) – actually does. 

"Is just," Rafa says, looking awkward and uncomfortable about it like he doesn't know the words, but Rafa's still the person who adjusts his water-bottles to a millimetre's exactness and needs an off-season to come to terms with the idea of minutely adjusting the weight of his racket, and Novak understands that Rafa doesn't carry anything on court with him except himself. 

Still, it's strange how quickly Novak's come to see the bare skin of Rafa's ring finger as wrong. Novak kind of loves the idea that in a couple of months, a year, there'll be a tan-mark where his ring sits, like this thing with Rafa has literally as well as metaphorically worked its way into the skin and bone of him.

"Is just for the match," Rafa says, touching Novak's wrist lightly with his ringless hand as he heads out of the locker room. _Clearly_ it's fine and Novak is insane, but what's new.

-

"They want you to do _The Ellen DeGeneres Show_ ," Benito says. 

Rafa doesn't even look away from the football, too intent on whatever Cristiano Ronaldo is doing to pay attention. "Make Nole do it."

"Thanks," Novak says. "For this, I hope Barcelona score twenty goals."

"Take back," Rafa says, and throws a cushion at his head.

"They want you both," Benito says, in a tone that means _children, pay attention_. "This is the point."

Rafa wrinkles his nose, and Benito looks like he wants to shake him. Benito has made himself a martyr to what he calls _this thing of yours_ , putting himself square between them and the press, their sponsors, and just about everyone else in the mainstream who turns around, blinks and says wait, what the fuck just happened, did those two tennis players just get _gay married_?

It being the twenty-first century and all, none of their sponsors have dropped them (although privately Novak thinks it will be interesting to see what happens when contract negotiations roll around). Press responses run the gamut of supportive to bemused to sly. Tennis is a pretty hermetic world and outside of the Slams the mainstream media tend to leave them alone, but one night Novak switches on a news channel to find four people he'd never heard of discussing the impact of his marriage on kids who play sport, and it hits him: that this thing of theirs, what they've done, is actually kind of a _big deal_

"We can decide later," Novak says, playing peacemaker. "Yeah?"

"Is decide," Rafa says, and, "No, no, no! _Puta!_ " but that's aimed at the television. Novak takes a moment out of commiserating with himself for the quickest ever turnaround from newlywed to football widow to share a sympathetic look with Benito, who rolls his eyes up to the heavens and leaves before the end of the first half.

Madrid lose, and Novak supposes that's the reason for the slightly sullen quietness Rafa spends the rest of the evening in until they go to bed. The bed is so big that they could sleep on different sides of it and it probably wouldn't even count as living together, and most nights they leave a careful space between them to avoid disturbing each other's sleep and thereby ruining each other's careers. Tonight Rafa curls a little closer, tentative, and Novak watches the softly thoughtful set of his face, and waits. 

And at last Rafa sighs and says, "Is just for us."

It's not that Novak doesn't know what he means, or that it's not a nice thought, but it's not really how this whole thing works, and Rafa is either being stubborn or naïve if he thinks it is. You can have a private life, sure – people don't need to know exactly who you're fucking and how – but who you are is always going to be public, and they've chosen to make this a part of who they are. Novak was always willing to do that, but now he thinks, what if Rafa wasn't? 

"Do you –" he starts, and then stops as his mouth catches up to the fact that there's a large part of his brain doesn't want to know the answer.

"Don't be stupid, no," Rafa says. He inches his fingers up underneath Novak's t-shirt, to rest warm and comforting on the ridge of his hip. "Is just I did not think I will miss- " He shifts a little closer, so that Novak will understand that he means just this: just the two of them, secret, in dark rooms, everything contained in the space between their bodies.

Novak refrains from mentioning that, actually, it hasn't really been like that since roughly a month after they first started sleeping together, when Rafa had blithely admitted telling Toni because, as he said, Toni would kill him if he found out any other way (like, say, the way that both Novak's brothers found out: by walking in on them).

"Yeah," he says, because he does understand. He doesn't want those days back, but in a lot of ways they were simpler.

Rafa goes quiet for a while and Novak starts, slowly, to drift off to sleep, lulled by the meaningless white noise of the air conditioning, the general. Then Rafa says, "I am still not go on the tv."

Novak starts to laugh; tired, helpless belly laughs. "Mother of god," he says, rolling over to kiss Rafa's bemused, mock-indignant mouth, "You drive me crazy; I love you," and when Rafa starts to protest Novak just winds fingers into his hair and kisses him until he forgets.

-

The first time Novak looks up to his player's box and sees Rafa's parents sitting next to his, he just about drops his racket right on the court. It's the third round, he's two sets and a double-break up and there they are, clapping for a shot he just made right along with his parents. They have less to applaud in the next two games, which Novak loses, his mind kind of blown, but when he pulls his shit back together and wins he sees them get to their feet and applaud.

"Your parents are at my match today," Rafa says, later, back at the hotel. His hair is still damp from his post-match shower, which Novak is trying pretty hard not to be distracted by, and he looks sort of confused and hopeful at the same time.

"Yours were at mine," Novak says. He leans a hip against the wall. "This is worrying. I think they are conspiring."

Rafa makes a scrunched-up face which means that he doesn't know the word and doesn't want to ask. "But if they are together, is a good thing, no?"

"Wait until you have your face on their shirts," Novak says. "And then tell me if you think it is a good thing."

-

The second week rolls around and it looks like the first round prediction might come true right up until, well, it doesn't.

The press dance around outright asking him whether it's the distraction of Rafa that's caused this loss and Novak dances around polite ways of telling them where to shove it.

When he gets out of press his parents are waiting for him, and with them Rafa, straight from practice, racket bag at his feet and a ridiculous baseball cap perched backwards on his head. God knows what they're talking about with their English of varying fluencies, but it looks civil and Novak's mother is actually smiling at something Rafa is saying, and Novak spares a second out of feeling obscurely sorry for himself to think about how weird his life is, lately.

Rafa spots him first. "Hey. You are okay?"

"Yeah," Novak says. He shrugs, and forces a smile from somewhere. "That's the tennis, right?"

Rafa gives him a long look that gently calls Novak on his bullshit, and Novak shrugs again, because Rafa knows as well as anyone else how it's never okay to lose. 

"Okay," Rafa says, and pulls him into a hug. It's a simple, heartfelt, _Rafa_ thing to do, and Novak's shoulders drop unconsciously, his body melting into it. The sudden tightness in his throat is half the sheer hindbrain physical comfort of the gesture and half the realisation that he can have this now, right here in the goddamn media centre of a Grand Slam. He doesn't have to wait for turned backs and locked doors, or make do with small gestures that conceal larger meanings; the years of deferred comfort are over. Rafa smells sweaty and terrible and Novak breathes him in, fists his hands in Rafa's shirt a fraction too tight for just a fraction too long. 

"Okay?" Rafa says again when Novak finally lets him go.

"Yeah," Novak says, only half-lying this time. "Also, Jesus, you need a shower."

-

On the day of Rafa's semi-final, Toni hands him a pass for the player's box.

Novak looks at it, a fairly innocuous thing lying in the palm of his hand, shiny tag and coiled strap.

"Does he know?" he asks. "I don't want to make a distraction."

"If he didn't want you around," Toni says, drily, "he probably wouldn't have married you."

Which, Novak concedes, is a fair point. The pre-nuptial bargain with Toni was that Rafa could do any damn fool thing he liked with his life (this part was implied), as long as it didn't affect his tennis (this part was explicit, extensively reiterated, and backed with the intimation of violence). If Toni thought that having Novak around would throw Rafa off his game, Novak would probably find himself securely tied up in a closet somewhere for the duration. 

He wants to ask, _are you sure about this?_ but Toni disappears before the exposure to feelings brings him out in a rash. It's Maribel who squeezes his arm before they head to their seats – their excellent, incredibly exposed seats, in front of a full Ashe crowd. 

"Just assume that everyone is watching you all the time," she advises, "and then try to pretend like you don't care." 

"Thank you," he says, glaring at her back as she swans off. "That is incredibly unhelpful."

-

The match finishes past midnight – four tight, brutal sets that finish with a stoic, disappointed Rafa and Novak in probable danger of a heart attack from tension and an excess of feelings ( _they do highlight reels of your reaction shots_ , Maria texts him, at the end of the second set breaker, _did you know your face is ridiculous?_ ) – and by the time Rafa gets out of press and physio and his family bully him into getting food it's ridiculous o'clock before they're finally left alone.

Rafa's mother kisses Novak on the cheek and says, "Take care of him," as they leave, and it's kind of ridiculous, how Rafa much Rafa is the baby of the family without actually being the baby at all.

Rafa has managed to fall most of the way asleep in the thirty seconds it took his family to leave the room, which would be really endearing if Novak weren't also so desperate to get to bed and sleep.

"Come on," he says, kicking lightly at Rafa's trainers. "What, I am your nanny? Get up."

Rafa makes an incoherent noise of complaint, and Novak is really too tired to drag him up. Instead he capitulates, takes the path of least resistance and effort, and flops down next to him on the couch.

Wordless and sloppy with exhaustion, Rafa puts an arm around Novak's shoulders and tips him close. His glasses dig into Rafa's shoulder and Rafa makes a protesting noise and removes them himself, sliding them off and putting them safely on the arm of the sofa where they're less likely to get crushed, so that Novak can rest his cheek against Rafa's shoulder. He yawns and Rafa catches it too, both of them sighing out into a warm, sleepy settle.

"Let's go on honeymoon," he says, after a moment.

Rafa huffs, a sound that might have been a laugh with a little more effort behind it. "For sure. Where you want to go?"

"Somewhere with the sun and the sea," Novak says. "With the drinks with the little umbrellas. Don't say they are all in Spain. I don't want to go to Spain. I want to go to a desert island where they never hear of us. I want to go somewhere with you and me and nobody else. Except maybe Pierre." He really misses his dog, with whom he shares joint but intermittent custody with Jelena. 

"I say yes to everything, except Pierre," Rafa says. "Your dog does not like me."

"You don't like my dog," Novak corrects. "Which, by the way, also is your dog."

"Mm," Rafa says, in a tone that suggests this had not occurred to him before, but is now occurring to him with a vengeance.

"Congratulations," Novak says. "You are a daddy."

To his credit, Rafa doesn't shudder. His fingers trace idly at the skin where the sleeve of Novak's t-shirt ends, the curve of his bicep, drawing goosebumps. He sighs heavily, and his side presses against Novak.

"The dog maybe can come," he murmurs, grudgingly, "if you want."

Novak laughs against the curve of Rafa's shoulder. "You are a good husband," he says, and means it.

-

Novak wakes up late the next day to the sight of Rafa shuffling around the bedroom, pulling on clothes.

"No," he says, muffled against the pillow. "That is the opposite of what you should be doing."

Rafa looks over and grins. "Yes?" he says, and smugly shrugs into his t-shirt.

"Yes," Novak says. He reaches for his glasses on the bedside table, the better to watch. "Where are you going?"

Rafa begins fussing with his shower-damp hair in the wardrobe mirrors. "Maribel call, she want to have lunch."

Novak yawns and rubs at his scratchy chin. "What time is it?"

"Lunch time," Rafa says, his sly reflected gaze catching Novak's.

"Shut up," says Novak. "And come here."

Rafa does, obediently leaning over the bed to bracket Novak back against the headboard with an arm on either side, but he keeps his kiss short and bats away Novak's hands when they go wandering. What else he expects Novak to do when he looks so good and smells so good leaning in close like this is anyone's guess.

"We finally have a day off together and you're leaving me here," Novak complains. "You know, this is abandonment."

"Tonight we can do something," Rafa promises. He adds hopefully, "Maybe we can see a show tonight? Maybe see _Phantom_ , no?"

"Oh my God," says Novak. "We already got married, that was not gay enough?"

For that Rafa gives him a pinch on the hip and a quick, hard kiss before he pulls back and straightens up. Novak sighs heavily.

"Two weeks and already the passion is gone," he says, flopping back against the pillows.

"You think?" Rafa says. He grabs his keys and phone and gives Novak a last, teasing look before he heads out of the bedroom. "Maybe you wait until I am back, no?"

"That's right," Novak calls, because he's an asshole and because Rafa is incredibly easy to fuck with. "Spend lunch with your sister thinking about fucking me."

From the living room comes a short, pained pause. "You are a bad person," Rafa shouts back, punctuated by the slamming of the hotel room door.

With Rafa gone and nothing to occupy him, Novak tries calling his own brothers, but he gets nothing but extended dial tones or voicemail. Well, fine, he thinks, and calls Andy instead.

"Sorry, Nole, my afternoon's all booked up," Andy says. 

Much more of this, Novak thinks, and he's going to get a complex. He's about to tell Andy this and maybe ask him what the fuck is the matter with everyone today when a knock on the door interrupts him.

"Hang on, let me get the door," Novak says. "At least someone want to see me."

When he opens the door, his brothers are there. They're both wearing smart suits and Djordje has a phone pressed to his ear into which he says, inexplicably, "Affirmative, target acquired."

"Uh," Novak says.

"Here, put this on," Marko says, thrusting a suit carrier in Novak's direction.

"You forgot –" Djordje begins and Marko snaps, "I didn't forget, mother of god, you are so annoying," at Djordje, and to Novak he offers something that looks worryingly like a blindfold. "You have to put this on, too."

"Andy, I can call you later?" Novak says. "I think I am being kidnapped."

-

When he's dressed and blindfolded to their satisfaction, they bundle him downstairs and into a waiting car.

"Okay, drive," he hears Djordje say, partly like he's in a movie, mostly like really enjoying the opportunity to pretend he's in a movie.

Novak would be concerned about how not one single person tried to stop the former world number one tennis player being kidnapped from a luxury hotel in the busiest city on the planet, but he's kind of busy living the experience. 

They manhandle him out of the car and to wherever they're taking him with hands tight on either arm, as though Novak is liable to run away at any moment (not an unreasonable concern). 

"Okay, one, two, three," Djordje chants, and the blindfold is roughly torn off.

"Son of a bitch," Novak says, blinking at the light. A little to his right, he hears Rafa saying something similar, and he turns to find him looking well-dressed and dazed, his hair a little dishevelled where he's just been de-blindfolded with as little care by his sister as Novak by his brother.

"What is happen," Rafa asks Novak, as if he's supposed to know what the fuck is going on.

Maribel grins, and says, "Welcome to your second wedding."

"Yeah, remember how you got married with none of your family and friends there and everyone was really pissed at you?" Djordje gestures at a door behind him. "Well, we fixed that for you."

"But we already –" Rafa starts.

"Okay, you don't actually have to get _married_ all over again," says Djordje. "You just have to say the words over again where our parents can see you so they can cry all over everything, and then we can have a party."

Novak looks at Rafa. It's not as if it looks like they actually have a choice in the whole thing, but he guesses it would still be polite to ask.

"So, hey," he says. "You want to see _Phantom_ some other time instead?"

"When I say you before that your proposal is the worst, I am wrong: this is the worst," Rafa says, still looking like he's not one hundred per cent sure that what's happening to him is actually happening to him. 

"Okay," says Novak. "But it's still a yes, right?"

It's still a yes.

-

So they get married and then, two weeks later, they get a wedding.

"My brothers and your sister make a scary team," Novak says, and Rafa laughs and says, "Yes, I think we have created the monster," because somehow, in less than two weeks, his brothers and Maribel have genuinely organised them a _wedding_ , despite two out of the three of them also competing. There's even a cake, which, okay, looks suspiciously like it was lifted from a sponsor event and re-iced to eliminate a logo, but has cake toppers in their image and everything. 

He gets a first dance with Rafa, awkward as fuck and nothing but left feet, both of them all nervous laughter while being mercilessly cat-called by what feels like a sizeable portion of the world's top professional tennis players; then he dances with his mother, and Rafa's mother, and then lets Maria spin him around the floor, fully two inches taller than him and more surefooted in her skyscraper heels than him in his flat dress shoes.

There's a karaoke machine that someone who clearly knows Novak too well arranged for, and when the party's in full swing he makes sure to collar Andy and the Bryans for a rendition of _Autograph_ ; at this point in the day Novak is essentially unembarrassable, and it is the best kind of revenge to see Andy squirm, his pasty Scottish skin turning vivid, hilarious red.

"I'm really happy for you and whatever," Andy says, when the song's over and Novak releases him. "But I also fucking hate you."

"Andy," Novak says, with a hand over his heart. "And after I invite you to my wedding."

Aside from the various family members who want to hug him and or cry on him, what his wedding really is is pretty much the weirdest players' party the tour has ever seen. Janko grabs him and says, "I fucking told you so!" and the Spanish players treat him warmly, like they always have since he stopped making Rafa miserable by beating him all the time. Fernando Verdasco shakes his hand seriously like an obnoxious older brother while behind him Feli rolls his eyes hugely and mouths, _ignore him_ , and Novak's just had his second wedding and he's _still_ not as married as Feli and Fernando.

He loses track of Rafa, and finds him again at the champagne table, quietly watching the crowd of friends and family.

"Married twice at twenty-eight," Novak says, leaning comfortably into Rafa's side. "People will talk."

"For shame," Rafa agrees, settling his own weight against Novak like he trusts in their ability to hold each other up. Novak shifts his arm so that his hand rests at the small of Rafa's back, and when Rafa turns with a smile Novak kisses him, because he gets to do that now. Not that he didn't before, but now he has a piece of paper and a ring and actual witnesses that say he can do it in an official capacity. It's practically an obligation. The kiss tastes of champagne and he thinks maybe you could die of this, and what a way to go.

He doesn't die. His heart keeps thudding along in his chest, keeping time to Rafa's. 

"So, about that conversation we were having earlier," he says, when he pulls away. "You think it will make a scandal to have sex in the bathroom on your wedding day?"

Rafa licks his lips, considering. "First wedding, yes," he says, definitively. "Second wedding, maybe, not so much."

"Wow," Novak says. "so by the fourth or fifth wedding it won't even be a thing." 

Rafa laughs. "How many times you want to get married, Nole?"

Novak shrugs. "How many disappointed relatives do you have who aren't here either?" he says. Between them, they could probably take this show on a world tour. "How many times would you say yes if I asked?"

Rafa laughs again and leans in to give him another champagne-flavoured kiss, and Novak grins into it. "Good answer," he says.

-


End file.
